It is part of the TurboDuo series and is factory overclocked to 1030 MHz

Dec 5, 2013 14:42 GMT  ·  By

The AMD Radeon R9 280X graphics card is powerful all on its own, but that didn't stop PowerColor from pushing it farther anyway, or from installing a better cooler. Not that anyone expected otherwise. This is, after all, what OEMs are for: making better non-reference boards for AMD and/or NVIDIA.

The name of the new video card is PowerColor TurboDuo R9 280X OC, where OC stands for overclocked.

The Radeon R9 280X video board normally runs at up to 1 GHZ, although that's only the GPU Boost maximum setting. The base clock is of 850 MHz.

PowerColor's board, or really TUL's since PowerColor is just a sub-brand of the company, operates at 880 MHz when not under pressure, and 1030 MHz when in a pinch.

Obviously, the different cooler is there to cope with the extra heat that the factory overclock would otherwise subject the various card parts to.

Also, in addition to better heat dispersion, the cooler should run at a lower noise level too, despite the use of two fans instead of one.

On that note, the PowerColor TurboDuo R9 280X OC features DirectFET and Digital PWM, plus a multi-phases design.

That way, it can be overclocked even more by users who want extra juice and know what they're doing, or are confident enough in their finances that they won't suffer from irreversible heartbreak if they burn it.

AMD EyeFinity technology is supported as well of course, leading to triple-monitor setups if the DVI, HDMI and mini DisplayPort outputs are all used properly.

That said, the (still un-priced) PowerColor TurboDuo R9 280X OC graphics card boasts 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM that communicate with the GPU over a 384-bit interface. Their frequency is of 1500 MHz / 6 GHz effective.